Friday night and I cooked for Homebaked. It was an evening for providing some good food and drink to the people who give up their time to work in the bakery and those that like to come in and say hello.

I was able to get most of what I needed for the cooking from either the veg shop on Oxton Road or The International Store a few doors down.

I was unsure of both the numbers and exactly how the cooking could be done on the night so it seemed like a good idea to make a vast pot of stew and then have some couscous, salad and bread to go with it.

I found a recipe for Lamb Harira which could easily be doubled up and then doubled up again to feed the masses.

I started last weekend first by soaking overnight and then boiling for an hour or so a couple of kilo of dried chickpeas. Having cooked them I kept the water they had been boiled in.

Monday evening I bought two legs of lamb from The International Store which had been cubed into bite sized chunks. That was all put into a couple of large plastic containers to marinade overnight in a mixture of grated ginger, garlic, bay leaves, onions, paprika, cinnamon, and turmeric.

Tuesday night I cooked the lamb, browning it first over a high heat in a wok and then tipping it into a very large pot. Once the lamb was browned I covered it with white wine, tomatoes and the water from cooking the chickpeas. It was all brought to a simmer before I tipped in half a packet of brown lentils and half of the chickpeas. The other half of the chickpeas were mashed up and then tipped in as well to thicken the sauce. It then took a couple of hours to cook through before being cooled down and stored in a cold fridge to mature for a couple of days.

Thursday night I made the veggie alternative harira which was more or less the same as the lamb harira but without the lamb. Clever stuff!

Friday afternoon I made a basin of tomato salad. A box of plum tomatoes from the veg shop chopped into rough quarters, mixed with a couple of sliced red onions, pomegranate seeds and molasses, olive oil, dill and chopped walnuts.

At the same time I made the couscous pouring the dried grains into large metal bowls, placing a large pat of butter in the middle, pouring over boiling water and then covering up with clingfilm for ten minutes and then fluffing up the grains with a fork and seasoning with salt pepper and parsley

That evening I heated the stews through on the range in the Homebaked bakery and then took them in the back of the car to the venue where I think they went down okay.

Four or five years ago I bough some horseradish to plant in the veg plot. It was only a piece of dried root about 6 inches long. I thought I could plant it in a quiet corner and if I was lucky there would be a scrape of horseradish to go with some been come autumn. It grew well the first year and we had a piece of roast beef to eat with it in October.

Since then it has been difficult to get rid of. Every piece of the spilt root is enough. This year I made a concerted effort to eradicate it. When i dug over the patch in spring I made sure that every last vestige of root was pulled out sometimes digging down a foot or more to get to the end of it. Over the summer I have pulled out every shoot as soon as it broke through the surface and made sure that I got the root as well.

It hasn’t worked. Four weeks away and it is everywhere. The whole patch was overgrown and gone to seed the remaining courgettes gorged heavy monsters.

As I pulled at the vegetation all I could smell was the  nose tingling horseradish and the pepper of nasturtium.

In the meantime we have been left with too many apples than we know what to do with, the trees are bent double with them, and I have starting on preparing to cook for a big meal later in the week.

I didn’t have too much difficulty finding a recipe.

I started off with Jane Grigson’s Good Things and rather to my surprise it wasn’t there so I moved onto her Fish Cookery and there it was. A mixture of crab, eggs, cream and cheese in shortcrust pastry.

I looked around to see if there were any others but those that I found introduced too many complications. Simon Hopkinson had tomatoes and and saffron in his and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall just had too much of everything.

At Ward’s Fish I was about to buy two dressed crabs when it was pointed out to me the whole crabs were better value. Even better I could put on some music to listen to as I extracted the meat. So I bought two fat Loch Fynne crabs.

Back at home as I pulled the crabs apart and teased out the small nuggets of white meat I was reminded of a time in Ireland seven or eight years ago when Kevin and Julie came to stay and I cooked up a large pan full of crabs and Kevin and I spent the best part of an afternoon pulling them apart and turning them into crab cakes.

We will have the tart with potatoes and salad from the garden. Having made the tart it was nice to turn the Jane Grigson’s book over and to see where it had come from.

THE SUMMER EVENING HAD BEGUN TO FOLD THE WORLD IN ITS mysterious embrace. Far away in the west the sun was setting and the last glow of all too fleeting day lingered lovingly on sea and strand…

We arrived back in Ahakista late Thursday evening and after a pint, something to eat and some wine we went to bed for a day of getting ready.

It is not often you are 50 and I have been planning on celebrating my birthday in Ireland – hopefully with some friends and family, eating good food – hopefully some of it from out of the bay – and then spending time in the pubs drinking pints.

All that came to pass.

Breakfast Friday morning was four rashers of Gubbeen bacon with brown sauce and coffee. We then drove to Bantry for the market and to pick up more bacon and cheese. I had put in orders for both when we were there the previous week.

The cheese was a great round wheel of Milleen wrapped up in its own cardboard box and the bacon was three catering packs of Gubbeen Streaky to keep the hordes happy the following morning.

There was a worrying 15 minutes whilst I waiting for Ma Murphy’s to open.It looked dead to the world at 5 minutes to 12.00 but then a man turned up with a key and I was able to slip into one of its dark corners with my first pint of the day.

There is something satisfying being sat in a good dark pub, chairs still on the table from the night before, waiting for the first taste of the first pint of the day. There was of course a temptation to stay longer and try on the fit of another pint and then perhaps follow that on with a sip from the bottle of West Cork Whiskey I had seen in there two weeks earlier. The day was still young and I resisted the temptation.

Back at the Cottage the weather was exceptionally still and it was not until late on in the afternoon that any sort of breeze got up. We had lunch sat by Curly’s Corner looking out over the bay the water looking like sheet metal with there being no movement on it.

After lunch I took one of the kayaks out and out on the water the only sound was the noise that the paddle made as it went through the water. I had a line with me and it dragged through the water behind the kayak. It seemed too still for there to be any fish out there but I still managed to catch two good fish.

As I paddled back to the Cottage a breeze started to ripple the surface of the water and back on land there was the first rush of people arriving from England and the need to get ready for a night in the pub.